Comment by dnomad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dnomad | Hacker News Reader

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year:

1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3].

2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that Facebook is working with the Chinese [4] (an obvious lie), accusing Facebook of lying to Congress and giving "data access" to device makers (another obvious lie) and, of course, when in doubt, it publishes pure rumour and speculation about Facebook [5].

And now we get yet another hit piece about Facebook's "creepy" patents. The reporter decided to pick the 7 most "creepy" patents and insist this shows Facebook's "plans" while dutifully ignoring the hundreds of other patents Facebook has generated. The reporter makes no effort to determine whether other companies have similar patents since this would reveal there's absolutely nothing special or unusual or "creepy" about such patents.

Throughout this propaganda campaign there's no mention of any conflict of interest despite the fact that we know the NY Times and other media corporations derive significant revenue from Facebook's platform and do not agree with many of Facebook's policies [6].

So it makes you wonder: what is a company supposed to do when the "leading paper" decides to continually attack them on the most flimsy terms? (Next week in the Times: Zuckerberg's creepy new haircut!) What exactly is Facebook's play here when its not foreign media waging the propaganda campaign?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-repl...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/opinion/facebook-china-pr...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/opinion/facebook-privacy-...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-devic...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-...

[6] https://www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-new-york-times-execs...

Facebook is a multi-billion dollar corporation with a history of obfuscating the truth and a terrible record on privacy. With the power they have they deserve scrutiny. I agree that selecting patents isn't a very convincing aproach but it is another data point. Could it just be that NYT is printing a lot of negative articles because they're are a lot of incidents involving Facebook doing something wrong?

Where was this level of scrutiny before last year?

Did fb turn evil in 2017.

Just because they didn't do something before why should they do it now? Is that really your argument?

I am not saying they shouldn't do it now. I am curious why it was not on their radar before 2017. Is that not a valid question? Do they not deserve any scrutiny themselves or can nytimes do no wrong, their intentions always pure. Would you extend same goodwill to foxnews?

I believe NY tîmes had articles about Facebook and privacy practices prior to 2017. There was the whole debacle where Facebook “locked down” their developer platform.

I think it’s reasonable for them to have more scrutiny now as it’s clear they don’t intend to fix their practices.

> I believe NY tîmes had articles about Facebook and privacy practices prior to 2017.

I cant seem to find any. Do you have examples?

You didn't look very hard then. There are plenty:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/technology/facebook-offer...

https://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/facebook-sti...

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25tue2.html

> Where was this level of scrutiny before

Fact that you had to look very hard and go all the way to 2010 to find examples proves my point not yours.

Going back to 2010 doesn't mean plenty.

If by looking hard you mean that I had type into a Google search box then yes it was very hard.

I simply posted the first few result that were returned by my search query.

And publication dates and volume of articles are completely orthogonal.

Did you miss what happened with Facebook in the 2016 election? Did you not see Zucherberg testifying to Congress? Given these stories why would Facebook not deserve increased scrutiny by the NYT (or Fox news)?

I think it's pretty obvious considering how shallow and frequent the reporting is that this isn't traditional media criticism. There are real issues with Facebook that are not new but they have nothing to do with "creepy patents" or Facebook giving data to Chinese phone makers. (Who, you know, make the phone.) The NYT subjects no other corporation to this sort of scrutiny. In fact it's difficult to the recall any anti-"specific firm" editorials from the Times this year compared to the 4-5 anti-Facebook editorials. All of this suggests that the NYT is waging a campaign and targeting Facebook and it would be good to know why.

I think you may be correct about the NYT and FB.

I personally assume that all news outlets are biased one way or another. And I do not believe there's a news outlet anywhere which is totally fair, unbiased and objective.

It seems reasonable to guess that the NYT's leadership believes FB is extremely influential in US politics and that it is imperative that FB avoid facilitating another 2016-style presidential campaign. In addition, most of the NYT's readership almost certainly believes that FB helped unfairly swing the election to Trump through illegal Russian funded ads and so forth, and it's good for business for a paper to cater to that readership.

Interestingly, The NY Times is also extremely influential in US politics, so it does seem that reducing Facebook’s influence has a benefit to The NY Times. Anyone have any data on the tracking that The NY Times website uses? Just curious if there is any hypocrisy or conflicts of interest. Most news orgs seem to aggressively track.

> Facebook is a multi-billion dollar corporation with a history of obfuscating the truth and a terrible record on privacy. With the power they have they deserve scrutiny.

Definitely agree.

> Could it just be that NYT is printing a lot of negative articles because they're are a lot of incidents involving Facebook doing something wrong?

Yes probably, though I've also noticed a certain level of bias. Google and Amazon probably have as many "creepy" patents to infer user behaviour, yet we don't hear as much about them on this space. Hell, Google pretty much invented the whole concept of tracking users across websites, "shadow profiles", and personalized search/ads.

Cambride Analytica was bad and Facebook should've veto'd its API users better from the get-go. The next obvious step after that article was a look at Google's own leaky data practices: I've installed too many Android games which ask for essentially full-phone access and I'm sure there's people who, much like with CA, don't consider the implications and just hit "ok".

I'm not trying to defend Facebook here, but I do want to point out they're not the only ones who should be getting scrutinized.

Agree all the large powerful tech companies need to be scrutinized. Given Zucherberg had to testify at Congress recently it seems reasonable and expected that it would result in a little more focus on them.

Having been on the in and outside of numerous cases I got to say I lost all confidence in even the most reputable media outlets (like NYT).

I don’t know about the media our parents had but I can personally attest that today’s media is poor entertainment at best and hateful propaganda at worst.

I stopped reading 99% of news a year ago (by blocking all outlets websites on my phone and computer) and am just doing fine...heck I would say I am actually doing better since I have more headspace for things that really matter and have more balanced view points (the later is obviously self attested).

The real news trickle up to me anyways.

This is what I did too. My /etc/hosts is like 200 lines long :D

>It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do.

Presumably, stop being a threat to national security, republic democracy, and making creepy patents, and if these issues are structural within the company, get destroyed.

Just because there be other bad actors in this space and similar technology spaces doesn't mean we shouldn't hold Facebook's feet to the fire on their flaws. The others, respectively, will and should ultimately get their turn.

NYT's business model seems to have turned to latching on to whatever sentiment is currently popular and beating the metaphorical horse for clicks until it's a bloody pulp, before moving on to the latest "outrage" of the week.

In fact, in catering to simply the loudest popular sentiment, they put themselves in the position of having to apologize for their recent election coverage due to how utterly biased it ended up being.

I understand they're all struggling in the battle for people's attention these days, but as an institution they somehow seem to feel they still stand out from, and above of, others such as buzzfeed.

It's the most popular sentiment but still nobody is deleting facebook, hmmm?

It could be the case that the click driving articles themselves is an effect of Facebook, but also Google and many others, serving as implicit or explicit filters favouring the style, because their click hungry ad selling algoritms feeds itself through ads on the article pages.

It's quite likely that they believe they have to write that way today, or shutter the doors.

They could still care more about good journalism, while mostly having to write in a style that looks like if they don't.

Only way to know for sure is to look at their economy, and how much is driven by per click ads, and how much is subscriptions/other sales.

The NY Times did not apologize in general for their election coverage, nor admit that it was biased, nor are you able to show in any way that it was biased.

Arguably a good thing to have the press shine light on these things. No? And by no means are the stories about Zuckerberg's haircut, the majority gives insights to the masses and create great discussions.

Actually, sometimes no, or at least aggregate. The volume being used to drive clicks makes it real hard to see the forest for the trees. Even on HN, one can rarely distinguish serious FB news from these dumb opinion pieces.

>"Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook."

The very first word on this page is "Opinion", making it very clear that this piece is in no way reflects the editorial polices of The New York Times.

Opinion pieces by their very nature make no claims of objectivity. The "Ed-Op" section has long been a mainstay of daily news organizations in the US.

In your list of citations you've mixed both objective journalism pieces and editorials. Based on this and your comments I suspect that you might not know the difference.

If you are going to be critical of a news outlet you might want to learn to identify the different article types first.

Facebook has been a regular part of the news cycle precisely because it is so central to an ongoing dialog regarding privacy, regulatory regimes and the power of a single corporate entity.

I find your insistence of a conspiracy while using phrases like "propaganda campaign" and "hit piece" very disturbing.

Policies of an outlet can be determined by volume and slant, even op-eds. Opinion pieces help drive a narrative that regular stories do as well. It's not like, to view NYT's ads, you knew the article you were visiting. They're next to each other in search engine results. This isn't on a site named nytimesopinion.com.

The sheer volume of articles now, regardless of whether you tell people they are in different forms, are there to drive views and, when categorized by topics, build the momentum to view more on all sides of the paper. This is not the print days of old. They are using all sections to obtain eyes and calling most of them news. Pretending what are basically blogs with official seals as what used to be print pieces ignores the sheer volume and collective value they have nowadays. The noise is much too large to compare to the past.

> Facebook has been a regular part of the news cycle precisely because it is so central to an ongoing dialog regarding privacy, regulatory regimes and the power of a single corporate entity.

Disagree. The news cycle is driving the dialog at this point, not responding to it. It's clear in the vast number of sustanceless articles. The disturbing part is that you accept your pitchfork, bow, and parrot these views while telling others what they have to learn before they can be critical.

>"Policies of an outlet can be determined by volume and slant, even op-eds"

No, op-ed pieces by there very nature are not subject to editorial review. Anyone is free to right one. And it is quite common to have editorials with opposing views published opposite each other in the Ed Op section. Saying that ed-op pieces have a "slant" is absurd. The entire purpose of an editorial is to express the views of an individual.

>"This is not the print days of old."

No the New York Times actually a physical news paper that you can buy at a newsstand. I did so yesterday. It is also a newspaper of record.

>"The news cycle is driving the dialog at this point, not responding to it."

The Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light because Christopher Wylie blew the whistle and began speaking about it. I would very much consider that a human driving a dialog.

> No, op-ed pieces by there very nature are not subject to editorial review. Anyone is free to right one. And it is quite common to have editorials with opposing views published opposite each other in the Ed Op section. Saying that ed-op pieces have a "slant" is absurd. The entire purpose of an editorial is to express the views of an individual.

I specifically said "volume and slant" not just "slant". Combined, they have value. I don't know why you chose just one part.

> No the New York Times actually a physical news paper that you can buy at a newsstand. I did so yesterday. It is also a newspaper of record.

That is not as related to their website as you are making it seem. I even cautioned against pretending they're the same and you did it again.

> The Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light because Christopher Wylie blew the whistle and began speaking about it. I would very much consider that a human driving a dialog.

I specifically said "at this point". I don't know why you are talking about when it started.

The failing @nytimes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com